YCGL - A New Adventure - July 6-9, 2022

YCGL - A New Adventure - 

July 6-9, 2022 

I got it partially packed up on Wednesday and mostly completed by Thursday noon so drove up to Sand Creek campground for two nights.  I was driving west on US130 about 3:00 listening to the opera on SiriusXM when it occurred to me that it was so quiet in the truck that I could Listen to the opera.  The speaker system has a noise reduction system that was almost as quiet as my 2008 Prius.  The air conditioning was keeping me cool and comfortable, and I was pulling the trailer at 65 like I was driving a car, not continually correcting like driving the motorhome.  I decided that all the pieces fit together, and I liked what I had gotten.   

When I got to the forest service campground we always went to, it took about 20 minutes to back up into the back-in site.  Yes, I know.  Keep you hand on the bottom of the steering wheel and move your hand the direction that you want the back of the trailer to go.  Well.... still not so easy the second time to park.  

Traditionally, dinner our first night out has been Knorr Stroganoff and a pound of browned hamburger.  This goes back to at least our pop-up days in the '80s, and maybe even tent days in the '70s.  You brown the  hamburger with a half an onion, except I didn't have an onion.  Once it's browned, you pour in the noodles and some water, milk and butter, except except I didn't have the milk or butter.  Like I said, mostly packed, just a little skimpy on the food side.  It also meant no milk for my cereal.  Nor was the steak I planned on for dinner over the grill with me, but those are problems for the next day.  Likewise, the bottle of wine for christening the first night out was not there.  I did have some kumbacha and used that instead.  I would have toasted the the new outfit, but I also left the bread and the toaster wouldn't work because I'm at a totally dry campground with no electricity and trailers typically do not have generators.  This is why it is called 'roughing it.'

At this point, some pictures of the interior.

First night dinner

Being the resourceful person I am, I decided I could get everything important down at the Friendly store in Centennial.  I got down there (only five miles back downhill) at 7:30 and found that they closed at 6:00.  

The heater worked fine and the electric mattress pad worked well off my little 700 watt modified sine wave inverter that I hooked up to the batteries.  The next morning, I decided to drive into Saratoga to the grocery store there.  It is always a pretty drive up over the Snowys, past Lake Marie and down Brush Creek until you cross over the North Platte river and then turn north to Saratoga.  I decided to catch lunch while I was there, but the hamburger stand and the Mexican place I've been to weren't open any more, so I ended up a pub for lunch.  I was lured by their magnum-opus hamburger which had a bunch of stuff on it, including onion rings, bacon, cheese and cucumber slices  I ate most of it, which was a big mistake, because it hit my stomach like a boulder.  I got to the grocery store and found about half the things on the list.  I found a nice steak (they do have good meat there) but my stomach was already telling me that wouldn't be a good idea, and I found something lighter.  

Also, one of the things I was missing was bug spray.  A big grocery store in a town known for its hunting and fishing, that shouldn't be a problem.  But, I had three people tell me different locations where the bug spray was located, all wrong.  I finally asked a checker, who walked me over to a shelf no one had mentioned, and all they had were wipe-on towelettes.  It sure didn't make sense to grill something outside with the mosquitos, so I made some gruel when I got back to the trailer and went to bed.  Smart move, because I didn't want to venture far from the trailer the next morning.  I had thought about staying an extra night, but decided to go home about 2:00.  Drove down back home and that entire trip, I got 15.7 mpg.  I was impressed.  

At least until I got to the driveway.  I didn't have my neighbor to help spot me, and it took a good 20 minutes to back in trying to not hit the motorhome next to it on the gravel and leave space for the truck beside it in the driveway.  When I finally got it situated, I walked back to find that I had backed into the garbage and recycle bins, which pushed into my smoker, pushing it over.  But where I ended up was exactly even with the back of the motorhome, so the picture below shows how much shorter the trailer is.  All together, the truck and trailer are four feet shorter than the motorhome and Sonic.  That helps.

And the first thing I did when I walked into the house was order a wireless backup camera for the trailer!

The backs of the trailer and motorhome are exactly lined up!